A vacation in paradise turns into fiery hell

Daniel Tepfer, Staff Writer

Updated 1:03 pm, Friday, December 30, 2011

Photo: New York Daily News Archive, NY Daily News Via Getty Images

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PUERTO RICO - JANUARY 01: Survivors Joan and John Benevento, who injured his feet jumping through casino window, and Chandra, 10, and Brandon, 7, of Woodbridge, Conn., are together in hotel room after four hours of serparation during blaze that killed 95 at the Dupont Plaza Hotel.. (Photo by Misha Erwitt/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) less

PUERTO RICO - JANUARY 01: Survivors Joan and John Benevento, who injured his feet jumping through casino window, and Chandra, 10, and Brandon, 7, of Woodbridge, Conn., are together in hotel room after four ... more

Photo: New York Daily News Archive, NY Daily News Via Getty Images

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PUERTO RICO - JANUARY 01: Victim of New Year's Eve inferno is carried down winding staircase of the Dupont Plaza Hotel. Many more are still believed to be still inside. Gov. Rafael Hernandex Colon said he suspects arson because of recent threats against hotel. (Photo by Misha Erwitt/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) less

PUERTO RICO - JANUARY 01: Victim of New Year's Eve inferno is carried down winding staircase of the Dupont Plaza Hotel. Many more are still believed to be still inside. Gov. Rafael Hernandex Colon said he ... more

Photo: New York Daily News Archive, NY Daily News Via Getty Images

A vacation in paradise turns into fiery hell

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They had gathered in paradise to ring in the new year.

Thirty-two friends from southwestern Connecticut, many with their wives and girlfriends, on a sun, sea and casino junket in Puerto Rico 25 years ago. But in less than an hour, nine of their members would be dead and the rest battered and scarred, victims of one of the worst hotel disasters in history -- the Dupont Plaza hotel fire.

Ninety-seven people were killed and nearly 200 others injured in the fire begun by disgruntled hotel employees. A quarter-century later, several area and former residents who were there that day recounted what they witnessed. The emotional scars, from seeing friends die, husbands leaping to safety while wives stayed behind and burned, are still present after all these years.

It happened just minutes before 3 p.m. on Dec. 31, 1986.

Thomas "TC" Coughlin, Joseph Caselli and Joseph DiMartino, all of Stratford, were lounging on chaises at the beach just yards from the luxury, 22-story hotel. In the hotel's second-floor casino, Eddie Rodriguez Jr., of Easton, paused over a game of craps to glance at his watch and realize he had just a few minutes to pick up his wife at the local mall. Rodriguez would leave, but later recalled a feeling of dread as fire engines raced by his car in the direction of the hotel.

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Twenty-five years ago while on vacation on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, reporter Dan Tepfer was tracked down and summoned by his Post editors in Connecticut to cover the tragic fire at the DuPont Plaza hotel. Today, Tepfer tracks down the state residents who survived that blaze and how it has forever affected their lives.

A number of the women, including Susan Lawrence, of Trumbull, and Linda Borkowski, of Beacon Falls, were in long dresses in preparation for a group party that was going to be held in the early evening.

Meanwhile, in the bowels of the hotel, three employees, Hector Escudero Aponte, Jose Rivera López and Arnaldo Jimenez Rivera, were gathered. The hotel's labor organization had earlier called a meeting, and at the end of the meeting, members voted to go on strike.

But Aponte, Lopez and Rivera wanted to do more against the hotel, and there, in its depths, decided to set it on fire.

How the fire started ... and why

While other union members staged a fight as a distraction, the three lit some cans of a flammable liquid commonly used in chafing dishes in a storage room adjacent to the ballroom on the hotel's ground floor. It was filled to the ceiling with unused furniture from the hotel. They later told police, according to reports, that they didn't intend to harm anyone, they just meant to scare the tourists from the hotel. But the fire quickly went out of control.

"It came through like a bomb," Benevento recalled. "It almost pushed you to the door. There was very little smoke initially. It just came as fire and roared through there. I just couldn't breath. It singed my hair. It was so hot and so intense in there, you had to do something."

While most people headed toward the big, heavy wooden double doors that led to the lobby, Benevento moved in the opposite direction toward the large plate-glass windows at the other side of the casino. He said the windows, which looked out on a cement patio two stories below, were partially blocked by rows of slot machines. He said he believes many people decided not to go the window route because of that.

"People ran towards the doors, but I picked up a chair and I hit the window and then jumped out," he said.

Eleven other people escaped through the window Benevento broke. Many suffered serious injuries. Massaro suffered a broken vertebrae, Bianco suffered a broken back, a fractured ankle and a crushed heel bone. Benevento broke his ankles.

"I wasn't as badly hurt as some of the others because there was a speaker on the side of the wall and my foot hit that speaker and it slowed my fall down. I was lucky when I hit that floor, I didn't do half the damage Pat Massaro and a lot of these other guys did. But they survived. Getting out of there was the key," he said. He lamented his friend, Melillo, stayed and didn't make it.

Also dying in the casino were Gulli, Borkowski, Cohen, Lawrence; Joel Katz, 50, of Trumbull; and Jerry Mendell, of Easton.

Saved on the roof by helicopters

DiOrio related at the time that she had been awakened by "sounds of confusion" from the pool area, which her room faced.

"Then I smelled and saw smoke," she said. "I thought that my television was on fire. I jumped up and turned off the TV, and that's when I realized that wasn't the problem."

She said she ran to the stairs and headed down to the lobby only to be blocked by a wall of smoke.

"A woman (the wife of the hotel's engineer) then told the younger people to help the older people. A young boy of around 15 took my hand and led me up the stairs, but the smoke was getting heavier and heavier and was coming in the vents," she said. "I cried and said, `I can't go on.' The boy practically dragged me up the remaining stairs."

DiOrio said they eventually emerged onto a ledge outside the 20th floor, where a group of men formed a human chain and began lifting them onto the hotel roof. Within 15 minutes U.S. Air Force helicopters arrived and took them off the roof to safety.

Meanwhile, out at the beach, Coughlin and the others were just realizing something was terribly wrong.

"I remember somebody saying, `look,' and there was all this black smoke coming out of the hotel," Coughlin said. "And at first we just thought that was curious. We kept watching, and then we heard popping sounds, which we didn't know what they were until later we found out that people were throwing chairs through the plate-glass windows trying to get out of the casino. But we still weren't sure what was going on. The first realization any of us had was when this guy came literally crawling up to us -- and I believe that was John Benevento -- and he came up and he was in great pain because he had broken his ankles when he jumped off the balcony."

He said Benevento yelled to them, "My kids, my kids, they are up in the room," and he was hysterical. "We still didn't get it until he said, "the place is on fire." And then we all then went running back to see what we could do."

Caselli said, "This other fellow from New Haven jumped, and I guess he cut his head pretty badly, and then he really shattered his leg pretty badly. We were using the lawn chairs as gurneys to pick people up and get them as far away as we could. This guy was in our group, and we put him in an ambulance, and they suggested I go along with him because there were so many people going in different directions. So I left the fire. I spent the rest of the afternoon and into the night until 12 and 1 o'clock in the morning with this fellow trying to get him some care and get him stabilized."

Coughlin said, "I ended up taking a fellow named Pat Massaro. I rode with him in the back of the ambulance, he had broken his back. I kept trying to get them to slow down because they were driving wild to get to the hospital. When I got back to the hotel, we were walking the beach out in front. I was in a bathing suit and T-shirt with blood on the T-shirt and I lived like that for three days. The blood might have been Pat's."

Despite having broken ankles, Benevento refused to leave the area until his children were found.

"My children were trapped in there until 8 o'clock so I wouldn't move," he said. His three young children had run up to their room on the 18th floor ahead of his wife, who was still packing their things at the beach. But when they got to the room it was filling with smoke from the vents.

"A guy in the next room grabbed them and really saved their lives," he said. "They finally got them down at 8 o'clock and took them right to the hospital and pumped their lungs."

a gruesome scene and smell

DiMartino, who had organized the trip, had the unenviable job later of going back into the hotel with firefighters to try and identify the bodies.

"The people were piled standing up in front of one of the doors all stuck together. It wasn't good," he recalled, his voice betraying his guilt all these years later. "Most were standing straight up. They were all burnt, I couldn't identify anyone."

Those survivors who weren't hospitalized were put up at a hotel across the street from the DuPont, but they weren't able to retrieve their belongings. Many spent the next few days wearing the same clothing they had on when they escaped the fire.

Meanwhile, in the rest of San Juan, people were still celebrating the holiday season.

"I remember seeing children playing with sparklers," Coughlin said. "We were looking out at the hotel, at the DuPont, and it was all black, no light on, smoke, it was just that juxtaposition of having festivities going on in one hotel knowing what had happened across the street. Like a tomb, sitting there staring at you in the face and children playing with sparklers."

Coughlin also recalled this unusual scent that seemed to be attached to everything. Later, to his horror, he learned what it was -- the smell of burning human flesh.

`What's important, what's not important'

When they eventually did get some of their luggage back months later, Caselli said he got a surprise. He had left a billfold with a horseshoe money clip in the hotel's safe.

"The lobby must have gotten super heated because the whole outside of a $100 bill in the billfold was charred, and there was the impression of the horseshoe money clip on the bill," he said. "I put it in my pocket that day, and I've carried it ever since. As a reminder of what is important and what's not important in life."

The fire would later result in the largest civil litigation in U.S. history, with more than 2,000 plaintiffs, 250 defendants and more than $2 billion in claims. Eventually, the hotel management and owners in the civil case settled with the plaintiffs. But companies that made the furnishings and decorations that were sued held out for trial.

Richard Bieder, a senior partner in the Bridgeport law firm Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder, was hired by the families of the victims and survivors from Connecticut.

He said it was decided that his case on behalf of Massaro would be tried first before a jury in Puerto Rico.

aftermath

A vacant San Juan hotel was taken over by the federal government and transformed into a courthouse, with the grand lobby serving as the courtroom. Each side was housed on a different floor in the hotel.

"There was a rule in Puerto Rico at the time that I didn't know about, that lawyers were forbidden from making any facial expressions in front of the jury," he said. "I have a hard time not showing any emotion during a trial, and as I stood before the jury a lawyer on the other side got up and accused me of making `googly eyes,' in front of the jury."

He said a key part of his case came when a medical expert explained to the jury the injuries suffered by Massaro.

"The doctor had been sipping from a paper cup, and after he finished, he inverted the cup on the stand and then slammed his hand on it to demonstrate the impact of the fall on Pat's spine," he explained.

Bieder went on to win the trial, but eventually all the defendants agreed to a settlement of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Of the three employees accused of the fire, only one, Hector Escudero Aponte, is still in prison. Armando Jimenez and Jose Francisco Rivera Lopez were released from federal prison in 2001 and 2002, respectively.

The hotel reopened in 1995 as the San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino.